Climate Impacts, Political Institutions, and Leader Survival: Effects of Droughts and Flooding Precipitation

Abstract

We explore how the political survival of leaders in different political regimes is affected by drought and flooding precipitation, which are the two major anticipated impacts of anthropogenic climate change. Using georeferenced climate data for the entire world and the Archigos dataset for the period of 1950-2010, we find that irregular political exits, such as coups or revolutions, are not significantly affected by climate impacts. Similarly, drought has a positive but insignificant effect on all types of political exits. On the other hand, we find that floods increase political turnover through the regular means such as elections or term limits. Democracies are better able to withstand the pressures arising from the economic and social disruptions associated with high precipitation than other institutional arrangements. Our results further suggest that, in the context of floods, political institutions play a more important role than economic development for the leaders' political survival.

Bangkok Precipitated: Cloudbursts, Sentient Urbanity, and Emergent Atmospheres

“…It usually means to cause an event or situation, typically one that is troublesome and happens abruptly, or unexpectedly. Indeed, there are also a few attempts to combine the ecological and political features of precipitation in analyses of ecological politics (Smirnov et al 2018;Turton 2000). Building on, and extending these efforts, I use the concept to characterize dynamic processes of practical ontology (Jensen 2014), in which different political and ecological agents and agencies come together.…”

Droughts and corruption

“…Similar efforts can be observed in other strands of the disaster literature. For example, seeFelbermayr and Gröschl (2014) andBerlemann and Wenzel (2018) for economic growth studies, as well asSmirnov et al (2018) for disaster-related consequences for the survival of political leaders. 8 A disaster is entered in EM-DAT if one of the following criteria is fulfilled: (1) ten or more people reported killed, (2) 100 or more people reported affected, (3) declaration of a state of emergency or (4) call for international assistance (CRED 2018).…”